by Sara Rosett
“Maybe not. Nick might not have brought it with him,” I said.
“But that would mean he lied to me when he said I’d get it back after the wedding,” Mom said. “That would be…just…wrong.”
“It doesn’t sound like he was worried about your good opinion,” I said. “He blackmailed you.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Mom said. “You mean he could have left it in California?”
“If he had pictures—images of the pages—why would he need to bring it? It would be another extra thing to lug around,” I said. “I know that when I travel I want to take as little as possible.”
“But you take the phrase ‘packing light’ to an absurd level,” Mom said. “One suitcase. It’s unnatural. Most people don’t travel that way.”
“But most guys have a tendency to pack lighter than women.” I stood and held out a hand to Mom. “I think there might be a way to find out if Nick Davis packed light or not.”
While Alex and my mom collected our jackets from Doug in the entryway, I returned to the inn’s empty dining room. As soon as she saw me, Marie picked up a small to-go container and came across the room. “I boxed your cake for you after you and Alex disappeared. Did you want to take it with you?”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll never turn down cake.” I took the box. “I suppose it’s been crazy today with the police and all.” I hoped I’d guessed right and that the police actually had been here. I’d assumed that because I’d heard Quimby instruct his people to begin searching the local inns that they’d found Nick’s belongings and taken them. But I could be wrong. Nick could have checked out before the wedding.
“It was insane,” she said. “They were in and out all afternoon.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the back of a chair, settling in for a chat.
Glad that I’d guessed correctly, I said, “I suppose you saw the guy they were interested in?”
“No, he checked in on Friday afternoon and went out right away. Adventurous sort. Hiking, that sort of thing.”
“How could you tell, if you didn’t see him? Did Doug book him a hiking tour or something?” The countryside around Nether Woodsmoor was famous for its beauty and attracted all sorts of outdoor enthusiasts. The most frequent visitors were into cycling. The rolling terrain was ideal for biking, but walking tours were also popular. The wedding had been Saturday afternoon so Nick could have hiked on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning.
“No. I saw his stuff. Trainers, hiking boots, and knapsack—that kind of thing.” She leaned in. “I saw practically all of his stuff. He was a messy one. Clothes and maps and books and shoes all over the place. I thought it would look worse after the police searched it, but it actually looked neater. They must have straightened as they looked everything over. Probably had to.”
Marie finally paused, and I managed to get a word in. “Did you happen to notice a book with a red leather cover and a black binding on the spine?” I’d asked my mom to describe her journal before we came downstairs. I was glad it had a distinctive look to it. It sounded like it would stand out, even in the clutter of Nick’s room.
“No, I don’t remember anything like that. It might have been there, but honestly, after I saw his little baggie…” she lowered her voice, “…of weed I didn’t notice much else.”
“He had drugs?”
“Not so loud.” Marie looked across the empty dining room to the kitchen door. “I didn’t tell Tara about it.”
“And you don’t want her to know now?”
“No, in case I should have reported it to her…or something. I’ve never come across anything like that before. I wasn’t sure what to do. I let it alone and pretended I didn’t see it. But maybe I should have told Tara or Doug?”
“I don’t know. Ask Tara about it. I’m sure she’s had the situation come up before.”
“And now the police have it. They took every last thing,” Marie said. “There was hardly anything left to clean in the room, only the fingerprint dust. I’m so glad I didn’t touch the bag.”
“Are you sure that’s what it was? Maybe it was something else.”
She gave me a look that I knew I’d given my mom many times when I was a teen. “I could see the bits and pieces of green leaves.” The words, Wow, Kate, you’re so out of it, were left unspoken, but I knew that’s exactly what she was thinking.
I encouraged her to talk to Tara about the whole thing and said good night. Alex and Mom were waiting for me in the entryway beside Doug’s reception desk. He was on the phone and gave me a nod as I joined them.
I kept my voice low. “The maid doesn’t remember seeing the journal, but she says Nick’s room was messy, and she might have missed it.”
“That’s disappointing,” Mom said. “But thank you for trying to find out. I suppose I’ll have to hope for the best.” A car horn tooted. “That must be my ride.” She looked out one of the small windows. I saw Parkview’s old Range Rover idling in the parking area at the edge of the inn’s courtyard.
“You had someone from Parkview drop you off for your evening of breaking and entering?” I asked.
“Of course. You didn’t think I walked here, did you?”
As the car pulled away, I shook my head. “That’s my mom in a nutshell, chauffeured criminal activities.”
Alex and I had driven to the inn as well, and my phone rang as we left. The display showed a number I didn’t recognize. I almost sent it to voicemail, but then decided I should answer.
“Kate, do you know where your mother is?”
“Dad? I didn’t recognize your number.”
“New phone. Is your mother with you?”
“Not at the moment.” I could hear the strain in his voice. “She’s on her way back to Parkview. Is something wrong?”
“The police are here and want to speak with her.”
CHAPTER 10
W hen Alex and I arrived at Parkview, the gates were open, but the bar at the ticket kiosk was down and it was closed. “I’ll call Ella.” She didn’t live at Parkview, but she would know who to call to get us on the grounds.
“If she doesn’t answer we can park here and walk in,” Alex said. The thick belt of oaks that edged the road made it impossible to drive around the bar. “Or we could double back, park on the side of the road down near the maze, and walk in.” Parkview’s grounds were vast and, while the spacious area around the house and gardens were enclosed with a wall, the rest of the land was open. “Do you remember that path near the river that we used when we were filming that time?” Alex asked.
I nodded and was about to suggest we park where we were and walk in when Ella answered. “Ella, it’s Kate. My mom is in a bit of a scrape. Alex and I need to get inside Parkview.”
“I’ll call Harris. He can meet you at the ticket kiosk. Use the door at the back of the west wing,” she said, and gave me a code, which I repeated to Alex. He scribbled it down on one of the pads of sticky notes that he kept in the car.
By the time Harris drove out to meet us, let us inside the gate, and we drove through the grove of oaks to the house, at least twenty minutes had gone by. My phone buzzed with a text as Alex and I strode down the dim hallway. It was from Dad. “They’re in the library,” I said to Alex as I read the text.
The door to the estate office was closed and the rest of the hallway was in shadows. I felt as if we were in a museum after hours as we passed oil paintings, tapestries, and glass cases displaying china and porcelain. Once we reached the center block of the house, we dashed across the checkerboard floor of the entry hall to the closed door of the library. I tapped, then opened the door.
This time Inspector Quimby was seated on an armchair near the windows. My mother perched on a sofa with scroll armrests. He looked up as we entered. “Mrs.—ah—Norcutt…and Mr. Norcutt as well. I’m afraid you’ll need to wait out—”
“Oh, please let them stay,” Mom said.
“I’ve already made one exception.” Quimby looked across the room.
Dad stood in a corner, hands in his pockets, his head tilted back as he squinted at the top bookshelves that ran from floor to ceiling. He didn’t take his gaze off the books. “Just trying to stay out of your way.”
“It’s perfectly fine with me if Kate and Alex remain,” Mom said as if we were about to join them for tea. “They already know about the journal, and Kate was the one who kept telling me I should call you about it.” She sent Quimby a look that could only be described as coy.
Quimby’s face remained as impassive as one of the Easter Island heads. Mom cleared her throat and turned the flirting down a notch. “I’d feel so much better with my daughter here, Officer.”
“Inspector,” I corrected quietly. “His title is Inspector.”
“Of course, that’s right. Inspector Quimby, you’ll let Kate and Alex stay, won’t you? I would feel so much more comfortable. Not being from here, I feel at a bit of a disadvantage, you know. Since Kate has lived in England, it would be nice if she could—”
“Fine.” Quimby waved us into the room. “It will actually save me time to talk with you all at the same time.” I moved to the sofa and sat down beside Mom before Quimby changed his mind. Alex folded his lanky limbs into the chair opposite Quimby. A red leather book with a black binding rested on the low table in front of the sofa. It was inside a sealed plastic evidence bag.
“Since we’ve established that you did know Nick Davis and had quite a bit of communication with him in the States, let’s go back to your meeting at the airport.” Quimby consulted the screen of his phone. “What did you and Nick Davis discuss at that time?”
“I wouldn’t call it a discussion,” Mom said. “Nick wanted an invitation to the wedding, and I told him it wasn’t possible. It was too late.” Mom sent me a warning look, letting me know she didn’t want to go into the original reason she’d declined to help Nick. She didn’t have to warn me off. I knew I was there on sufferance, and I was going to say as little as possible. Mom turned back to Quimby. “Then Kate arrived to pick me up, and we left.”
Quimby looked at me. “Did you speak to him?”
“No. As soon as Mom saw me, she left him in the coffee shop area and came over to me.”
Quimby looked back to Mom. “And you saw him again…?”
Mom said, “He showed up in the pub. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Couldn’t believe what?”
“He’d obviously followed me to Nether Woodsmoor. The nerve! He was inside the pub. It was so crowded that I didn’t see him when we came inside, but he was waiting for me when I came out of the restroom. He said he had to talk to me privately. He said I’d want to hear what he had to say.” She shifted position slightly. “The way he said it—well, it worried me. He seemed different, too, more…I don’t know…intense. He’d always been so nice before. Even at the airport he had been insistent, but not rude.”
“What happened next?” Quimby asked.
“I told Nick to meet me outside in front of the pub. The pub was packed with wedding guests, and I didn’t want to speak to him there. When I got outside he told me about the journal, but you already know about all that,” Mom said with a note of finality in her tone. “It’s late. I think I’ll—”
“Not yet, Mrs. Sharp,” Quimby said. Mom was already standing, but sat back down quickly.
Quimby scrolled back through his notes then said, “We’ve been over how you agreed to get Nick Davis an invitation to the reception and arranged that through Ella Tewkesbury.”
“To the reception only,” Mom said. “Yes, I could see he was going to continue to make trouble, so I said I’d do it.”
“Why did he want to go to the wedding reception?”
“I have no idea. He was an architecture student. I suppose that was it.”
I thought of the baggie Marie had described and wondered if I should mention it. Could being under the influence of drugs explain some of Nick’s behavior? But Quimby had all of Nick’s possessions. If he didn’t know about the drugs now, he would soon. I doubted Nick had managed to erase every trace of marijuana from his clothes and belongings.
Quimby looked up from his phone and fixed his intense green gaze, which was such a contrast to the rest of his bland appearance, on Mom. “He wasn’t a student.”
“Yes, he was,” Mom said. “He was studying at one of the state universities—I forget which one, but I’m sure you can find out.”
“No, he was between jobs.” Quimby consulted another screen on his phone and read from it. “Deceased was currently unemployed. Once we identified that he was registered at the inn, we were able to use his passport to get in touch with American authorities. Nick Davis worked as a bike messenger and occasionally drove for Uber, but other than that, he didn’t work. He lived with his girlfriend, who is employed as a paralegal.”
Mom sucked in a breath. “But he talked about his classes and the campus and how hard he had to study.”
“He lied to you,” Quimby said.
“Well, I never—”
Quimby asked, “At what point did Mr. Sharp arrive outside the pub?”
“Oliver, you mean? I don’t know,” Mom said. “I didn’t see him come outside. He appeared there and told Nick to go away.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I told him to shove off.” Dad came to stand beside me at the end of the sofa. “I saw the kid and Ava through the window of the pub, and I could tell he was bothering her. I went outside and told him to leave.”
Quimby turned his attention to Dad. “And then what happened?”
“He said he had every right to be there. Then he pushed me. I was on a patch of uneven ground, and I fell. The troublemaker took off before I could get to my feet.”
“And a good thing, too,” Mom said. “You would have only caused more problems. I don’t know why you came outside in the first place—”
“Because I don’t like to see a man bothering a woman,” Dad said.
“Getting back to the point at hand…” Quimby said over both of my parents, and they subsided. “Mrs. Sharp, what did you say to Nick Davis when you met him at the reception?”
“Nothing. I didn’t meet him. I stayed away from him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Mr. Sharp?”
“If you’re asking if I talked to him, no, I did not,” Dad said. “I didn’t even know he was there.”
Quimby transferred his gaze to Alex and me. “We didn’t talk to him either,” I said.
“That’s right,” Alex said. “I never saw the man.”
Quimby nodded and tapped out a note on his phone, then turned back to Mom. “What did you wear to the wedding, Mrs. Sharp?”
She stared at him. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in fashion.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “A light blue tea length dress and a matching jacket with three-quarter length sleeves. Why?”
“And a hat?”
“Of course.”
“Describe it, please.”
“It was wide-brimmed and made of straw, I believe. Isn’t that what the salesgirl said, Kate?”
I agreed, and Quimby said, “Color?”
“The same shade of blue as my dress. We were so lucky to find something to match—”
“Lace? Feathers? Ribbon?” Quimby asked.
Mom blinked. “Yes, matching feathers and ribbon as well as some gauzy material. What is it called, Kate?”
“Tulle.” I didn’t like where the questions were going. My stomach suddenly felt queasy.
“That was it,” Mom said.
“So this is from your hat then.” Quimby removed a plastic envelope from his pocket. He held it up so that we could all see the light blue feather inside it.
Mom reached for the bag. “Yes, it is.” She held it out to me. “It’s fuzzy and long, but with that sort of notched pattern cut into it.”
Quimby said, “If yo
u didn’t speak to Nick Davis at the reception, how did a feather from your hat come to be found on his body in the maze?”
CHAPTER 11
“I don’t know.” Mom shoved the plastic envelope back at him.
“You’re sure you didn’t speak to Nick Davis yesterday?” Quimby asked, his bright green gaze fixed on Mom’s face as he fingered the bag with the feather.
“Yes. Absolutely sure. I didn’t talk to him or go near him.” She pointed at the feather. “That must have fallen off my hat and been tracked outside…or something.”
“All the way through the garden, around the lake, and into the heart of the maze?” Quimby asked.
Dad stepped forward. “Are you accusing her of murdering that man?”
“No. I’m asking questions. It’s a curious thing when a bright blue feather turns up under the lapel of a dead man’s suit jacket. I have to find out how it got there.”
“Just checking on you to make sure you were able to get into Parkview and that everything is okay,” Ella said.
I pressed my phone to my ear and watched the headlights cut through the darkness as Alex and I left Parkview. “Yes, we got to the house fine,” I said to Ella. “But things aren’t going so well, actually. Inspector Quimby was there interviewing my parents about Nick Davis.”
After Quimby said he didn’t have any more questions—“at this time,” he’d emphasized, Mom had quickly disappeared, claiming she felt one of her migraines coming on, and Dad had patted me on the shoulder. “It will all work out, I’m sure.” I didn’t share his confidence.